Forgotten Photos I took on Lake Sevan a Year after the Disastrous Spitak Earthquake of 1988, Armenia

 

 

 

A major earthquake shook a town, Spitak, in Northern Armenia on December 7, 1988. The surface-wave magnitude of the quake was 6.8 and a maximum MSK intensity of X or Devastating. About 50,000 people were killed and up to 130,000 were injured. Mikhail Gorbachev formally asked the United States for humanitarian aid, along with 130 other countries. All countries responded within 4 days of the earthquake with much needed assistance by providing rescue equipment, medication, and medical and public health teams.

A year later, in November 1989, I was part of a public health team that visited Armenia to assist the government design an epidemiological prospective tracking of the earthquake survivors’ health status, as well as the health impact of the natural disaster on regions surrounding Spite. That project is still ongoing in 2026.

… As an exclusively film-user photographer I traveled around our green earth in the past 50 years, I have kept miles of 35 and 120mm negatives, mostly well preserved in (often) clearly labeled envelopes. Last week, looking through a box of negatives, I came across an envelope labeled “Spite, 1989.”

I was surprised, since I thought that all my exposed films during that trip were destroyed by the miss-calibrated metal detector at Moscow airport. But, there was one 35mm strip that had obviously survived and, although I do not recall it, I had developed.

So, time for discovery!

I went to my darkroom and printed a few frames that looked good under the loupe. And with the magic of a photo slowly appearing in the developer solution under a red light, suddenly almost 40 years’ old memories came back. Now I recalled exactly when I took these photos!

There were frames of colleagues during our trip to Spitak, and then in the capital Yerevan. But the most interesting ones were from a half-day trip we took to Lake Sevan, the most historic and large Lake of present day Armenia. So I decided to print a few from that trip.

It was a sunny day, and the shores of the lake were covered in the November snow. We walked to the Hayravank church, lit a candle, said a prayer and listened to a local colleague tell us the story of the church.

The two photos I printed are of the church from a distance, and of the steps leading to that church.

 

The Hayravank church: Built between the 9^th and 12^th centuries, Hayravank is a dark basalt construction that sits on a high cliff overlooking Lake Sevan. It is more humble than the main church on Lake Sevan, the Sevanavank, which is easier to access.

The day of our visit there were magnificent clouds for a B&W photo. I recall trying to capture the church on the high cliff and the snowy path.

Unfortunately my 1953 Soviet Kiev camera did not do well with the shade that covered the historic stone carved “cross stones” along the way.

These cross stones, called khachkar are carved memorial steles are to show a cross and additional motifs, such as interlaces. Their origin goes back to the 9^th century when Armenia was liberated from Arab rule.  It is said that there are about 40,000 khachkars in today’s Armenia, many preserved in Yerevan museums and many are still standing in ancient cemeteries.

Since the carving of the two khachkars on the path to Hayravank did not show well in my photo, here is one from Noratus cemetery where more than 1000 khachkars exist.  (https://armgeo.am )

 

 

… Almost 40 years later, an old B&W film negative strip came to refresh my memory of difficult times in Armenia following the 1988 Spitak earthquake. But, the people’s resolve of that ancient country stood unshaken and Armenia is today a regional leader in mining copper and molybdenum, as well as software development and information technology.

And I have heard many a master of ceremonies at social gatherings who have raised their glass and, tongue-and-cheek, recited Winston Churchill’s secret for a long life:

                                    “Cuban cigars, Armenian brandy and no sport.”

Things have changed, since.

 

February 19, 2026

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2026

 

PS/ I dedicate this posting to the memory of Dr. Harout Armenian who passed in 2025. A physician, epidemiologist, painter, author and academician, Harout was the second president of the American University of Armenia. He designed and directed the epidemiological survey of the 1988 Spitak survivors ‘and populations in the regions.

He was a mentor for two generations of public health professionals around the globe, and a very dear personal friend.

A Journey of Sharing

 

 

What stays in us

Is what we have given away

Sitting atop a stony wall

Or in a graveyard where weed

Had grown

Upon dried

Red

Roses

 

What stays within us

Is the first frisson

The last touch

And the promise

We never

Made

 

Yet we kept

 

February 16, 2026

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2026

 

 

PS1/ I wrote these lines after a colleague sent me a note about sharing curiosity through the arts.

It reminded of a poem by Alberto Rios, inaugural state poet laureate of Arizona and the first lines of his poem entitled “The Cities Inside Us”:

                                                  We live in secret cities

                                                  And we travel unmapped roads

 

PS2/ I took this photo in the Louvre Museum, Paris.

Dogs Mark Their Passage by Peeing; Humans Choose Their Passage by Leaving Themselves in Others

 

 

It was a cold January morning in the High Desert of Arizona. Just after sunrise I was walking downtown with my dog to start the day. It is a ritual we kept for almost a decade.

At that hour, there usually are a few homeless folks bundled up in blankets looking for the first rays of sunshine. They make coffee, roll cigarettes, and say hello to passing dogs.

“I wished you can leave your dog with us on cold nights,” one of them said while petting Ziggy. “He would keep me warm with his thick coat.”

Half way around the Court House oval, I saw an older man sitting on the bench with a pipe in his mouth, wearing a cowboy hat. He had found his sunny spot and was watching passersby.  I had not seen him before, and Ziggy immediately went to check him out.

And to my surprise, he sat by the man.

“Good morning,” I said, “it is very rare that my dog would sit down by a stranger.”

“Maybe I am not a stranger,” he replied after taking the pipe out of his mouth. “You can sit down too, if you want.”

Since Ziggy had no intent to get on with his walk, I did sit on the bench.

 

… He was in his seventies, I guessed. Smartly dressed and an aura of comfort.

“I am visiting my daughter and it is my first morning in Prescott.”

And he continued “Your dog is a large Akita, yes?”

I nodded.

“They are usually not friendly to strangers, I know. But you two seem comfortable with the moment. That is good.”

 

I have always enjoyed such encounters. In the past decades when I travelled the globe as a health care professional, most such encounters were in airports, between two flights. Others when I was stuck for 10 or 20 hours in the plane seat with an interesting stranger next to me. I often did not remember their names, but never forgot the conversations.

 

“I have been sitting here for a while and watching dogs do their morning walks and business. They do mark every tree, fire hydrant and parked car tires,” he continued without looking at me. “It seems to be both a passage and a rite of passage.”

A rite of passage?

“Yes, just we all do. But our passage is marked by leaving a bit of us in others,” he pondered.

My morning coffee had not yet cleared my mind, and I did not feel like discussing philosophy. But since Ziggy seemed comfortable listening to the man who was visiting his daughter, I asked:

“What if others do not want to receive and keep what we leave in them?”

He put his pipe back in his mouth and looked at me with a smile.

“That, you have no way to anticipate. But our passage makes no sense without trying. It becomes imperceptibly sonorous.”

“Sonorous??”

This time he did not look at me:

“Check the dictionary – it is a beautiful thing.”

 

… Now even Ziggy was getting impatient – he got up, looked at the man, and headed to the first tree on his left.

To leave his mark.

 

February 1, 2026

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2026